Publications

We understand that the UK needs to increase housing supply from around 200,000 net additions to 300,000 homes per year to identify housing needs of 1.5m homes in the next five years (see our previous report with the Town & Country Planning Association). We have identified Build to Rent (BTR) as a model that can help address and meet these goals (see our previous report with Future of London). The task before… Read More

Immigration is one of today’s most conflictual issues. There is disagreement about how immigration affects economies and about how national policy can improve growth and support social cohesion and welfare. Stakeholders include not only policy makers and migrants themselves but indeed almost all of society. London has a particular stake in the debate—it is the UK destination of choice for migrants from all parts of the income and education spectra, many of… Read More

London has a chronic housing problem. The private and public sector seem to be experimenting with Build to Rent model as one of the many ways to tackle this problem. In this report, Future of London and LSE London set forth definitions, motivations, contemporary context, challenges, reasons for the public sector to promote the model, and recommendations for the various stake holders. The report acknowledges two leading definitions from the Greater London… Read More

Kath Scanlon and Christine Whitehead have conducted the largest ever survey of UK landlords in a report commissioned by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. In their report, they find significant findings on landlords’ profile, motivations, and plans. The report outlines how many landlords have mortgages, how many properties they own, how old they are, typical profile, and overall plans. About 2500 landlords were surveyed, of which 49% respondents reported owning their property… Read More

On Thursday, 1 December 2016, LSE London launched the final report and recommendations on how to accelerate the supply of new housing in London. This was a culmination of discussions with specialists from central government, the GLA, and London boroughs together with a small number of other key actors from industry and academia. This event followed up on our interim report we published in June 2016, taking full account of changing political… Read More

The Social Mobility Commission published their annual report on the problem of social mobility in Britain. This year they placed strong emphasis on new evidence that suggests that for young people obstacles for social mobility are getting worse not better. The evidence they provide highlights four key areas that negatively affect the poor, low-and middle-income families and communities in England: a discriminatory education system, a two-tier labour market, an imbalanced economy, and… Read More

The Mayor of London commissioned LSE London research on housing density. This research data is meant to aid in the development of policies and preparation of the London Plan. Links to all of the reports can be found here. LSE London’s Christine Whitehead, Alan Mace, and Ian Gordon wrote two out of the the five reports. The first report titled, ‘Defining, measuring and implementing density standards in London’ (London Plan Density Research… Read More

New research published today suggests that it is economic pressures rather than government policies which have been most important in changing the role of private renting across Europe. The research, undertaken by LSE London with the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research and experts from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands found that demand for private renting is growing for four main reasons. First, in many places it has become harder to… Read More

At first glance the recent changes in regulation around Short-Term Letting (STL) and Permitted Development Rights (PDR) may seem to have very little in common. The 2015 Deregulation Act allowed Londoners increasing freedom to rent out all or part of their homes on a short-term basis. PDR alterations mean that it is now possible to convert properties used for office to residential development without planning permission. So what do these changes to… Read More

The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) have awarded the Excellence in Planning Research award to Tony Crook, John Henneberry, and Christine Whitehead for their work on the book, Planning Gain: Providing Infrastructure & Affordable Housing. The book draws on research undertaken by the authors over the last two decades and examines critically the development and implementation of planning obligations (planning gain) mainly in a British context but also drawing on experience from… Read More